Impact of Conservation Programmes on Biodiversity and Livelihoods

Conservation programmes undertaken in developing countries must be assessed not only at the level of biodiversity conservation but also as regards their impact on the livelihoods of the local population. Such evaluation requires intensive field work and data gathering, often under challenging conditions. With support from the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Collaborative Fund, Wageningen University, Gola Forest National Park, RSPB and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, C-EENRG members have conducted research across 100 villages in Sierra Leone, to assess the differential impacts of conditional and unconditional transfers on livelihoods and conservation.

Members active in this cluster:

Andreas Kontoleon

Shaun Larcom

Representative research outputs:

West, T. A., Börner, J., Sills, E. O., & Kontoleon, A. (2020). Overstated carbon emission reductions from voluntary REDD+ projects in the Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(39), 24188-24194.

Carmenta, R., Zabala, A., Trihadmojo, B., Gaveau, D., Salim, M. A., & Phelps, J. (2020). Evaluating bundles of interventions to prevent peat-fires in Indonesia. Global Environmental Change, 102154.

Probst, B., BenYishay, A., Kontoleon, A., & dos Reis, T. N. (2020). Impacts of a large-scale titling initiative on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Nature Sustainability, 1-8.

Wiik, E., Jones, J. P., Pynegar, E., Bottazzi, P., Asquith, N., Gibbons, J., & Kontoleon, A. (2020). Mechanisms and impacts of an incentive‐based conservation program with evidence from a Randomized Control Trial. Conservation Biology.

Voors, M., T. Turley, A. Kontoleon, E. Bulte and J. A. List, ‘Behavior in Context-Free Experiments is not Predictive of Behavior in the Field: Evidence from Public Good Experiments in Rural Sierra Leone’ (2012) 114(3) Economic Letters 308-311: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517651100396X

Voors, M., E. Bulte, A. Kontoleon, J. A. List, and T. Turley, ‘Using Artefactual Field Experiments to Learn about the Incentives for Sustainable Forest Use in Developing Economies’ (2011) 101(3) American Economic Review 329-33 : https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.3.329

Leisher, C., M. Sanjayan, J. Blockhus, N. Larsen, and A. Kontoleon, ‘Does Conserving Biodiversity Work to Reduce Poverty? A State of Knowledge Review’, in Roe, D, J. Elliott, C. Sandbrook and M. Walpole (eds), Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Exploring the Evidence for a Link (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118428351.ch9/summary

Vira, B. and A. Kontoleon, ‘Dependence of the Poor on Biodiversity: Which Poor, What Biodiversity?’, in Roe, D, J. Elliott, C. Sandbrook and M. Walpole (eds), Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: Exploring the Evidence for a Link (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118428351.ch4/summary